6 Suffolk and North East Essex ICS | ‘Our Journey Together’ With all change also comes opportunity. Health and care systems can start to move beyond the parameters of Integrated Care Systems, to build on learning and experience and to work with new partners around new tables. We have the exciting potential for a ‘reset’ and ‘renewal’ of arrangements for local health and care system and partnership working in both the new Essex, and Norfolk and Suffolk health and care systems. Any new arrangements for system and partnership working in health and care will of course need to be discussed and determined by all stakeholders including in particular the new mayoral Strategic Combined Authorities once formed. To start these discussions, this report brings together the collective reflections of a broad range of local stakeholders who have been part of ‘Our Journey Together’ in Suffolk and North East Essex. 1.2 Why a learning and legacy project in Suffolk and North East Essex? Stakeholders in Suffolk and North East Essex have collectively agreed that we should not lose the value of the particular and sometimes unique ways that we had worked together as an ICS. The Suffolk and North East Essex ICP Committee established an ICS System Learning Project, shaped at an online workshop in October 2025, attended by more than fifty local leaders. At the workshop Ioan Fazey, Professor of Social Dimensions of Environment and Change at the University of York, presented ways to achieve fundamental and significant shifts in society towards more regenerative and sustainable futures. Below is a summary of stakeholders’ views and comments on why we should take the opportunity to reflect on our learning and legacy, how we should gather learning from across our health and care system, and what the questions we should ask ourselves at this point in our journey. Comments from ICP workshop participants – October 2025 WHY - do we need to take this opportunity to reflect on our Suffolk and North East Essex (SNEE) ICS learning and legacy? • We are in a period of major change, we don’t want to lose the great work we have done to date and our achievements. Lots of organisations are in transformation. It is vital that we do this work for multiple stakeholders not just health. It would be a waste to lose this opportunity for learning and to capture our work. • There will be new partnerships in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex, as well as continuing relationships. We should share our learning and capture that sense of togetherness and ‘we’ - how to work together. We should understand good/best practice in the system to support both a future Essex ICS and a Norfolk and Suffolk ICS. • We need to ensure that during this period of transition we don’t throw out what we have learned and achieved, and have to start from scratch again. In particular, ‘Future Shift’ aligns to the NHS 10 year plan, it was created with and builds on our partnerships. We must maintain our strategic intent – (“it mustn’t be half arsed!”). • We should celebrate what was done well but we must not be arrogant. We should have humility and recognise that whilst some parts of the system and partnerships perform well, others do not. We need to understand where we have made mistakes and ensure we learn so that we don’t repeat them within new systems. • With SNEE coming to an end, it’s important to leave well. This is a constructive response to imminent loss and demise. It is also a way to way to maintain growth and should make change less painful and prevent us from holding onto things that we don’t need to. This work gives breathing space to reflect. • There are lots of small ‘butterflies’ (pockets of transformation) in SNEE but not enough large ones so we need to learn why and how to progress. We should share good work and report what worked and what didn’t work.
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